- Proving your worth (Proving Your Worth)Need to pickpocket "Hagara the Stormbinder", 4th boss. To spawn Hagara, you must first beat a series of waves of trash that you must fight off, then Hagara will descend upon your raid and most likely aggro someone that is standing to close to her since people tend to stand right under her. You need to pop Vanish or Shadow Dance in order to be able to Pick Pocket Hagara if that happens, and I recommend you do it sooner rather than later.

Starts and ends at Lord Afrasastrasz (Lord Afrasastrasz) at Wyrmrest Temple, or along the Path of the Titans, inside the Dragon's Soul raid. Lord Afra will fight along side you, as well as other NPCs, up until Morchok. If you don't see him at the entrance, check inside the temple. You really can't miss him.

You first start by going counter-clockwise around the area, by either stealthing up to the building and turning right, or staying along the edge of the surrounding hills. Once at the back outside of the manor, you will find rope on the ground, use it to scale up on top of the roof. You should now see a box stuck in the wall, use this to enter Ravenholdt Manor. You will find yourself standing at the top of the spire, stealth down the stairs to the second floor overlooking the table, you should see Fahrad pacing to your left. Look underneath you for patting NPCs to make sure none of them will be in your personal bubble when you drop down, once you're sure the area is clear, drop down and quickly run under the stairs and into the basement. If you enter combat make sure you vanish immediately and hurry down the stairs, there is still hope for you.

Find Lord Hiram Creed (58.6, 67.6 @Gilneas City) in the middle of the military district and kill him, enter in through Merchant's square and stealth to him, make heavy use of Sap and Distract. Zazzo will pull you out if you're bad at being a ninja.

Creed has 1,859,760 health, and has two phases. For various reasons, Combat handles the various mechanics the best. He is susceptible to all forms of CC: incapacitates, disarms, snares, interrupts, etc with the exception of kicking Consuming Darkness. If you see another rogue working on the quest, know that you do not need to be in a group with them to qualify for credit, you don't even need to be on the same faction to get credit for the kill. To get a feeling for what the fight looks like, here is an example from a Sub rogue PoV, standard Sub spec & glyphs, WP in the MH, Mind Numbing OH.

Phase 1 lasts until 75% health:- Consuming Darkness - Spawns a short range AOE underneath the player. Should be moved out of immediately to reduce damage taken. Can not be kicked, but Creed can still be stunned and incapacitated while this is being cast.- Blackhowl's Will - A strong ranged attack that eliminates your energy. This cast should be interrupted by any means. I save Cloak for this if he casts it while I'm still kiting and can't get back.- Blackhowl's Rage - Cast whenever you use smoke bomb at range. I recommend you don't use Smoke Bomb at any point in the fight. (Source)

In phase 2, he adds another spell to his repertoire:- Shadow Breath > Shadow Breath - This is a negligible ability, and only requires the player to move behind Creed. Creed will not turn while channelling the second part of the cast, which allows the player to take no damage if they move, and allows the player to deal some easy damage too. Do not waste a stun or interrupt on this cast, just move. Don't use Killing Spree or Shadowstep while this is being channeled, you will probably take AOE damage.

Throughout the encounter Creed will cast Consuming Darkness which spawns an AOE under you, while peppering a few Blackhowl's Will and Shadow Breath in. It's important to move him out of the void zones, and fight outside them. Make heavy use of Gouge and Kidney Shot and Creed will be locked down too much to out-DPS your Recuperate. If you're confident that the enrage won't be an issue, wait out your blind for the sake of your cooldowns despite not gaining health. While he is pretty easy, he can still catch people off guard. Save most of your CDs for P2, I recommend starting phase 2 with , and leaving Evasion for the last 20%.

There are several utility glyphs that you would typically skip in PvE that can be of use here, make note of Charred Glyph, Charred Glyph, Charred Glyph. There are also several utility talents that are fairly strong during this. If you find yourself running into issues, try grabbing talents like Elusiveness, , or if you don't have them already, however don't feel limited to just these if you find yourself having issues. If you find yourself running into issues with diminishing returns, back off. Gouge and Kidney Shot should be used often, but on CD is just too often.

It's important to note what this fight involves, while you will try and CC Creed as much as possible, there are some issues that arise simply because you're fighting an AI unit 1v1. For example, you lose a significant chunk of time to be behind the target for to kick in, you also lose the ability to Backstab and Ambush for most of the fight as Sub. Creed can be killed by any spec, but this fight does appear to favor Combat for various reasons, and Combat is definitely recommended.

- Blood of the Betrayer (Blood of the Betrayer)Sneak into the eastern entrance to the Master's Cellar at Karazhan, and defeat Nalice.

Nalice is a 3 phase fight, and has roughly 3.1 million health. First Phase is mostly simple CC and DPS, and plays somewhat similar to Creed, and is susceptible to essentially all forms of CC again. Phase 2 involves a quick sprint across the room or you die. Phase 3 is just Phase 1 with a new spell, and starts right after you disrupt Arcane Destruction a second time. Nalice enters phase 2 every 33%, aka twice.

Phase 1:- Arcane Infused Armor - Greater reduces damage taken. If you're at 5 CP's, Kidney and then Expose Armor, otherwise just use Expose Armor to remove the buff.- Arcane Infused Weapon - Deals additional arcane damage with each white swing. Gouge and Kidney Shot to prevent white swings and remove the buff (needs more testing).- Arcane Missiles - Can be cloaked or interrupted, don't use cloak, save that for later. Cloak will cancel the cast which just means they will start meleeing you.- Enrage - Increases the damage dealt by Nalice, should be Shiv'ed off.Phase 2:- Arcane Shield - Cast as soon as P2 begins, drops off when P2 ends. Prevents any/all damage taken.- Arcane Power - You gain one stack of this each time you disrupt an arcane device near Nalice. The buff lasts 30 seconds.- Arcane Destruction - Cast during P2, at the end of the cast it deals significant AOE damage if not interrupted by disrupting the devices.Phase 3:- Blazing Shadows - Leaves a shadow damage area underneath you every second for a couple seconds. Just run out of it, Nalice will follow you.

P1 is, again, fairly similar to Creed and favors Combat spec. Just DPS down Nalice, while trying to mitigate as much damage as possible. Keeping Nalice heavily CC'd helps with this.

P2 however is different. At the start of P2 you will be teleported to one side of the room, on the opposite side of the room will be two arcane devices being channeled into by Nalice. You need to immediately Sprint to them, as you have 20 seconds or you die. Keep up Recuperate, and right click on the devices to disrupt them. With each device you disrupt, you gain a buff for 20 seconds that increases energy generation by 50% per stack. This becomes a little harder when you notice there are spots on the ground in a pattern that will deal AOE arcane damage to you if you stand over them. Try to avoid these, but getting to the devices is far more important.

Phase 3 goes back to the same tactics as Phase 1. Whenever you get Blazing Shadows, just move out of the area.

Grab the vial off the dead body of Nalice, turn the quest in to Zazzo.

- Victory in the Depths (Victory in the Depths)Take the Vial of Preserved Dragonsblood and stage 1 daggers to Wrathion at Ravenholdt.

This rewards you with stage two of the daggers (ItemID: 77947 & 77948).

If you wish to join my cause and slaughter the black dragons in hiding, prove yourself by taking down Hiram Creed. He's amassing an army in Gilneas.

We haven't been able to slip past his defenders, but we've got a man on the scene keeping an eye on him. Zazzle Twinklefingers, a very crafty arcane mage, is waiting for us to contact him just outside of the ruins of the Gilnean capital.

The daggers I have given you are lifeless shells. They can do great things, once they are given a means to contain the power I have in mind.

I need for you to acquire Shadowy Gems for me. The facets of these unusual stones are like windows into the infinite. They are often used by minions of the Twilight's Hammer to control the most powerful of elementals.

A great battle is raging around Wyrmrest temple. Collect Elementium Gem Clusters from Deathwing's minions and bring the gems to me.

Do you understand why I have you assassinate the dragons, yet spare the mortals? It isn't their fault. They must seek out their own destiny, free from the meddling of my kind.

We are nearing the end of our mission, and it is time for you to seek out your own destiny as well. I can continue to augment your weapons, but collecting shadowy gems won't be enough. My work will require entire clusters. Gather them from my father's minions ...

Post by Azazel

Post by Pathal

EDIT: I'm looking for strategies anyone has had so far, there's more than one way to skin a cat on some of these, particularly killing Creed, and stealthing around various areas.

Post by asakawa

This is a really nice collection of information. I'm going to sticky it in the Rogue forum for now, but I really suggest that you keep developing it into a guide for when 4.3 is released (like Gnub's legendary staff guide).

Post by Pathal

Still looking for other strategies players have had. It kind of sucks that all of like, 5 people, have gotten to Creed though.

Post by Enzo90911

Thanks a lot for making this, I was looking for just that. My guild does few PTR runs, so I'll probably always be behind you, but if I find something you missed, I'll post it here.

Post by kodikun

I'm sure this has already been answered (and I'm betting the answer is a big fat -NO-) are the dragon soul parts of this quest do-able in the Raid Finder version?

EDIT: This also looks fairly simple to me, I don't see any boss killing needed? (aside from one in kara?)

Post by Pathal

I don't think you can. I haven't been able to check, and I don't remember seeing a stance from Blizzard on this, but if I were to hazard a guess I would say no. If they aren't even giving us gems from it, I'm not sure why they would ever give us a legendary through it.

Also, yes it looks pretty straight forward, everything outside of looting the gems is done solo with what I've found. I'm still not sure of where we obtain the Elementium Gem Cluster, but I expect it to drop from bosses since trash tends to respawn, which would make farming trash the clear fastest way, and could lead to Legendaries within a week. The only solution to keeping these on trash, while preventing them from being farmed week 1, would be to limit how many drop via raid lockouts, or track it on a character by character basis. It seems like it would be far easier to just have them drop off a boss.

I've seen some people bring up the fact that we loot Gem Clusters off bosses for our chance at epic gems, but I don't think that the two are the same thing. Partially because the text is orange, but also because that would mean we can have multiple Rogues doing the entire quest line simultaneously since we can loot our own gem cluster (for gems). They openly said too many people could work on Dragonwrath at the same time, I'm sure they wouldn't repeat and exacerbate the problem with the legendary just one tier later.

So, in all my time datamining, I'm still not entirely sure where we get the gem clusters, or just how far you can get without killing anything in Dragon Soul. There's potential that we may not even have to kill a raid boss, but I think the odds of that are slim to none. Also of note, the NPC we kill at Kara isn't inside the raid instance, it's a subzone located underneath Kara. It was also the location of where we did part of our attunement for it, if you were around for that.

Post by kodikun

I don't think you can. I haven't been able to check, and I don't remember seeing a stance from Blizzard on this, but if I were to hazard a guess I would say no. If they aren't even giving us gems from it, I'm not sure why they would ever give us a legendary through it.

Also, yes it looks pretty straight forward, everything outside of looting the gems is done solo with what I've found. I'm still not sure of where we obtain the Elementium Gem Cluster, but I expect it to drop from bosses since trash tends to respawn, which would make farming trash the clear fastest way, and could lead to Legendaries within a week. The only solution to keeping these on trash, while preventing them from being farmed week 1, would be to limit how many drop via raid lockouts, or track it on a character by character basis. It seems like it would be far easier to just have them drop off a boss.

I've seen some people bring up the fact that we loot Gem Clusters off bosses for our chance at epic gems, but I don't think that the two are the same thing. Partially because the text is orange, but also because that would mean we can have multiple Rogues doing the entire quest line simultaneously since we can loot our own gem cluster (for gems). They openly said too many people could work on Dragonwrath at the same time, I'm sure they wouldn't repeat and exacerbate the problem with the legendary just one tier later.

So, in all my time datamining, I'm still not entirely sure where we get the gem clusters, or just how far you can get without killing anything in Dragon Soul. There's potential that we may not even have to kill a raid boss, but I think the odds of that are slim to none. Also of note, the NPC we kill at Kara isn't inside the raid instance, it's a subzone located underneath Kara. It was also the location of where we did part of our attunement for it, if you were around for that.

Thanks for the response! I am not in an active raiding guild, so I'm seeing if it will be possible for me to get this item. (I'm not saying I -should- be able to get it, just seeing if it's possible.) I'm with you on the clusters, I bet they are from bosses as well. At least I can farm the gems off of trash!

Post by Pathal

I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but the last time I looked the quest text said that the Shadowy Gems were looted from the Elementium Gem Cluster, which in turn came from creatures in Dragon Soul. The creatures part of the text was vague, possibly to prevent data miners from knowing too much beforehand (/tinfoil hat), but logic and reasoning indicates they probably come from bosses.

I'm all ears when it comes to hearing things that refute what I've found so far. In fact I would love for a couple things to turn out different, but I'm mostly confident in whats above at this point. I'm not sure if anyone has made progress on Cluster Clutch right now, seeing as Dragon Soul is rarely up, and even then it is it's only partially running. I'll look around again tomorrow to see if anyone has picked a cluster up, where, etc.

Post by songblade

For the first quest where you need to pickpocket the fourth boss, is this doable without having killed the first few bosses (can you make a raid group, walk in get the item and walk out)?

Cheers

Post by Pathal

As everything is now, yes. I don't anticipate them changing the first quest again, but who knows.

Post by Caperon

Any tldrs?

EditThough i do appreciate the hard work ^^

Post by Pathal

Err.... What would you want a TL;DR of?

Post by Caperon

Dont get me wrong, i read through the initial post.However is there a tldr as in what can i solo, what needs a group, what is raid required, etc...

Or more like questhubs & stuff.

Post Reply

You are not logged in. Please log in to post a reply or register if you don't already have an account.